1. Field of the Invention
An aspect of this disclosure relates to an information processing system, an information processing method, and an information processing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
There exists a system where print data is not immediately printed in response to a print request input by a user on, for example, a personal computer (PC), but is stored in a storage of a server or an image forming apparatus in association with a user name of the user (see, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-236348 and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2001-051915). In the system, when the user enters the user name and a password via an operations panel of an image forming apparatus, the image forming apparatus performs authentication based on the user name and the password. When the authentication is successful, the image forming apparatus displays, on the operations panel, a list of sets of print data stored in the storage in association with the user name. When a set of print data is selected from the list, the image forming apparatus obtains the selected set of print data from the storage and prints the obtained set of print data.
With a system as described above, a print is output when a user is present beside an image forming apparatus. This configuration makes it possible to prevent a print from being left unattended at the image forming apparatus or picked up by a wrong person. Accordingly, this configuration makes it possible to improve the security of printed information.
With a system as described above, however, only a user having an account for authentication can execute a print process. Therefore, for example, such a system is inconvenient for a guest who has no account and needs to ask a person with an account to print a document. To solve this problem, a common guest account may be provided for guests. With this approach, however, because a common account is used by multiple guests, a guest can access print data of another guest. Thus, this approach may compromise the security of printed information that the system is intended to provide.
As another approach, an image forming apparatus dedicated for guests may be provided. However, this approach increases costs and installation space.